


Combat Baby

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [3]
Category: Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arguing, Fights, Getting Back Together, Humor, M/M, Post-Break Up, Swearing, Taco Bell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: Shinwon has never been good at going down without a fight, Hongseok is Tired, and there are burritos on the line.Soundtrack: "Combat Baby", Metric





	Combat Baby

It takes eight texts and five missed calls for Hongseok to decide he'll answer.

He'll answer. He wasn't sleeping anyway, and Shinwon probably knows that, and he's exploiting it. How incredibly _Shinwon_ of him.

Hongseok lets the fifth call go to voicemail, so he can check his texts. It's been three weeks since they said a word to each other, and the last words they said (well, _screamed_ , in Shinwon's case) weren't exactly pleasant. Hongseok figures if he reads the texts first, he'll at least have an idea of what he's in for when he picks up the inevitable, impending sixth phone call.

 

_HONGSEOK_

_HONGSEOKKIEEEEEEE_

_I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE YOU UNBELIEVABLE FUCKHAT_

 

Hongseok frowns. Maybe he _shouldn't_ answer the phone when Shinwon calls back, after all.

 

_I didn't mean that_

 

That's better.

 

_Anyway you're an amazing spectacular carafe of dicks and I need you to pick up the phone I need you to come get me_

 

Hongseok blinks. He chooses to ignore the first half of that particular message for the moment, and focus on the rest. Chewing on his bottom lip, Hongseok lets his eyes wander over the words again. _I need you._

_To come get me._

Hongseok scoffs out loud to absolutely nobody, because it's the middle of the night and no one's been here with him in the middle of the night since Shinwon was here with him. How typical. Needy, bratty, stupidly adorable (fuck _off,_ brain) Shinwon.

He keeps reading.

 

_I'm reliving our past_

_You know_

_When we liked each other??_

 

Hongseok loved Shinwon. Shinwon loved Hongseok, too, but they broke up, or they were on a break, or something like that. Hongseok can't quite remember which it was.

He wonders how many lies he's told himself in the last three weeks.

He remembers exactly which it was.

 _“I can't do this right now,”_ Shinwon had said (yelled). _“I feel like I'm suffocating. I need a break.”_

Hongseok had found it all terribly dramatic at the time, but now, laying in bed reading these texts and trying to prepare himself to face the ridiculous hurricane that is Shinwon, his chest kind of hurts. A different sort of suffocation.

Right on schedule, Hongseok’s phone starts to vibrate in his hand, the contact picture he’d saved for Shinwon right after they broke up, or went on a break, popping up on the screen. Hongseok had changed it in a rare moment of pettiness, and Shinwon hadn't called him since and he’d forgotten to change it back.

He stares at the picture, Shinwon dressed as the devil for Halloween last year, at the bright red words Hongseok had scribbled over his face and then saved as an edit.

In the picture, Shinwon was winking, the wink that had made Hongseok weak in the knees for so long.

 _I'M LITERALLY FUCKING SATAN,_ Hongseok had scrawled over it in messy, indignant script.

He sighs and answers the call, just so the evidence will disappear.

Hongseok doesn't say hello. It would be pointless.

“It's the sixth fucking time I'm calling you, granny panties. I know you're not fucking sleeping, so what the fuck.” Shinwon doesn't bother making it into a question, so Hongseok doesn't reply. He's too busy racking his brain to figure out why “granny panties” has made Shinwon's long list of insults-on-demand.

Shinwon lets the silence hang for approximately negative three seconds before he goes on.

“Anyway, come get me.”

Hongseok plays with the edge of his comforter, clearing his throat. “Why?” he asks after a while. After too long.

Shinwon exhales sharp and fast, the sound crackling in Hongseok’s ear. “Because. No one here is worth fighting with, and you are.”

Closing his eyes, Hongseok curls himself into a ball on top of his sheets, pressing the phone to his ear with one tired finger. He's tired suddenly, because this was always the problem. Shinwon was always made of too much fire, and Hongseok was too much earth. Shinwon always wanted to fight the world. Hongseok mostly just wanted peace and quiet.

They loved each other. But their pieces just didn't fit.

When Shinwon speaks again, he's quieter. “Are you still there?”

Hongseok nods, then he remembers Shinwon can't see him. “Yeah. I'm still here. Where are you?”

“Taco Bell, obviously,” Shinwon replies, and Hongseok opens his eyes again, and he can actually _feel_ the confusion seep onto his face.

“Taco Bell. Sure. At...one forty-five in the morning,” Hongseok mutters, checking the clock on his bedside table. Shinwon doesn't answer.

Hongseok sits up a little. “Are you drunk?” he asks, because it seems like a logical question at this point.

Shinwon snorts. “No, headass. I'm reliving our past, like I told you before. This was the scene of the crime, if you’ll recall.”

Hongseok recalls. “It’s maybe slightly hyperbolic to call it a crime,” he says, because all the other things he wanted to say might get him in trouble or get them back together, and he’s not sure which he’d prefer at the moment.

“It was a fucking crime,” Shinwon starts, “how good you looked in that black turtleneck. ‘Excuse me! That’s the last spork, and it’s mine.’ An opening salvo for the ages, honestly. We were fighting from the very beginning, Hongseokkie.”

Somewhere in the middle of Shinwon’s words, Hongseok sits up again, sits up and gets up and goes to the kitchen and pulls out a bottle of wine and a corkscrew and then remembers that he might have to leave to go rescue Shinwon from whatever existential quasi-Mexican cuisine hell he’s slipped into, and he just ends up staring at them instead. It's a metaphor, really, for his entire relationship with Shinwon. Hongseok always wanted nice things, and he could never have them, because he had Shinwon instead.

Hongseok feels it goes without saying that Shinwon was usually better than nearly anything else he could have wanted.

Except his sanity. He escaped with that intact, fragile though it may be. It feels a little more frayed, at the moment.

“We didn’t _have_ to fight. That’s the point, Shinwon. We didn’t _have_ to fight and we didn’t have to cause a scene at a restaurant that I’m _very_ sure you aren’t even actually allowed inside of ever again, and we didn’t have to have weird hate sex in the bathroom of said restaurant, and it didn’t have to turn into a second round of not-hate-sex at my apartment followed by a two year relationship, and--”

“I’m not inside the Taco Bell. I couldn’t make myself go in, even if they'd have me. I’m wandering around the parking lot,” Shinwon says softly, and the simple, meaningless-in-anyone-else’s-mouth words hurt Hongseok because he knows he hurt Shinwon, he knows some of this is his fault too, but hurt is still hurt whether you’re dealing it or taking it, and he’s taken a lot of it recently, and so Hongseok defaults to defense.

“Shinwon. We broke up,” Hongseok starts (“We’re on a break,” Shinwon corrects lightly). Hongseok swallows so loud he thinks maybe the sound of it echoed through the walls and into his neighbor’s apartment. “We _broke up_ ,” he repeats, disregarding Shinwon’s addition. “We broke up, and that means that life waved a magic wand over me and washed away all my stress and problems and I don’t _have_ to care about you anymore. Do you get that? It’s great that you’re wandering around the parking lot of the shitty restaurant where we first met in the dead of night, but I don’t _care._ ”

“You care,” Shinwon says simply.

Hongseok cares.

He sighs, slipping down to the kitchen floor. He didn’t bother to turn on the light when he came in, and now he’s blinking into the dark, a pair of glinting cat eyes blinking back at him, and a moment later there’s purring, and warm fur pressed against Hongseok’s leg. He sighs louder. He won’t pet her. He won’t. She’s not his cat.

“Hi, Mulgogi!” Shinwon sing-songs immediately, because he’s somehow always had a psychic connection with this animal. “Daddy’s going to come home soon! I miss you so much, but Jinho-hyung hates cats because he’s a _monster_. Yes, he is. A _monster_ , Mulgogi.”

Hongseok leans back, banging his head softly against the refrigerator. It feels kind of good, actually. Sometimes dull, repetitive pain is preferable to the kind of emotional terrorism he feels around Shinwon nearly constantly.

There’s quiet on the other end of the line, a soft, rustling wind the only thing Hongseok hears for a while. It’s quiet, and suddenly Shinwon is even quieter.

“It was okay sometimes, wasn’t it?”

It’s a terribly non-specific question, but Hongseok knows exactly what Shinwon’s talking about.

And it was. It was okay sometimes. It was more okay than Hongseok had ever been. It was as okay as he could ever hope to be.

It was perfect.

“Yeah, Shinwon-ah. It was okay.” Hongseok hates that he’s smiling, just a little.

The next silence stretches over them like a blanket, but it doesn’t feel oppressive. It’s warm, just warm enough to heat both of them gently from the inside out, until Shinwon speaks up again.

“I’m sorry, Hongseok.”

Hongseok’s eyes fly open. In an entire two years, Shinwon never apologized for anything. He never apologized for screwing around on Hongseok twice (Hongseok never apologized for cheating on him in revenge, twice, either, so he figured they were even), he never apologized for his temper, he never apologized for all the wet towels he left on the floor, and more than anything, he never, _ever_ apologized for the way he barreled into Hongseok’s boring, sad life, turned everything upside down, made every day fun and strange and scary and exhilarating, and then gave up.

But, he’s apologized now, and Hongseok doesn’t know what for. Maybe it’s for everything.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Shinwon continues, and Hongseok can’t breathe, suddenly. He laughs a little, a odd, half-strangled sound, and Shinwon chuckles. “Bet you never thought you’d hear that from me.”

“No,” Hongseok says, because it’s true.

Shinwon clicks his tongue, sighing. “That’s maybe the thing I’m the most sorry for.”

The words are simple. But they mean more than anything else Shinwon has said to Hongseok yet. He doesn’t know what to say back, what will be big enough or right enough or important enough to match, but Shinwon saves him from thinking too hard anyway.

“So, I’ve got these two cold burrito supremes and half of a flat Pepsi that I compelled some nice woman to go in and buy for me because, as you know, I'm banned from this fine establishment for life, and do you want to just, like...I don’t know, Hongseok, can we work this out?”

Hongseok is already jogging through the parking garage when he says it, wearing his pajamas and slippers and it’s two o’clock in the morning, and maybe they can, after all. Maybe they can work it out. Maybe Hongseok can apologize too, for the way he pulled back, the way he abandoned Shinwon without ever leaving him, the way he pushed what they had further and further down his list of priorities until it hit the bottom and so did they.

Maybe he can apologize for being so scared of being happy that he let the best thing in his life go without much of a fight.

Shinwon always fought enough for the both of them. But maybe some things are worth fighting for, Hongseok thinks.

He realizes he hasn’t answered Shinwon yet as he guides his car through the empty streets.  “Maybe we can,” Hongseok says finally. “And if not, I’m sure we could find an empty public bathroom nearby and sort it out that way.” He’s smiling when he finishes the sentence, and he can hear the smile in Shinwon’s voice when he answers, too.

“Yang Hongseok, your kinks never fail to surprise me.”


End file.
